Trump’s NFL Subtext: I’m The Only White Guy Patriotic Enough To Take On ‘The Blacks!’

Donald Trump’s hideous new dog whistle on Fox & Friends, in which he lectured the mostly white NFL owners over being "afraid" of their black players who #TakeAKnee during the national anthem, had an equally hideous subtext: that owners should take a cue from his “mastery” of the subject.

Trump knew that Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth would never challenge a word during their interview that aired today. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted, a Trump interview on Fox & Friends “is a little like a corporate chief executive being interviewed by his own P.R. department. Not only because the P.R. department isn’t going to ask hard questions, mind you, but also because the chief executive is often happy to talk up how great his team is.”

Hegseth has also shown an affinity for Trump’s racial dog whistles. He called Trump’s refusal to denounce Charlottesville white supremacists “a unifying message.”

Hegseth covered some substantive topics in the interview such as tax cuts and health care. But they were covered, as Bump put it, with “[l]eading questions, little follow-up and all the space in the world to say whatever [Trump] wanted to say.” Do check out his column exploring the kinds of follow-up questions that any interviewer not in the tank for Trump would have asked.

Media Matters’ Pam Vogel pointed out that Hegseth seemed to have sourced his questions “from the president’s own unhinged Twitter account—once again.” She also noticed, “The two men did not find time to discuss the humanitarian crisis3.4 million American citizens are currently facing in Puerto Rico (or, if they did, Fox didn’t think it was worth airing).”

Yet, during the extended time Fox gave Trump to play overseer of the NFL plantation, there was no discussion about the reason the players are protesting, racial injustice. It was yet another way to delegitimize them.

In his opening question to Trump about the NFL, Hegseth helped validate Trump’s attack.

HEGSETH: Your critics say it’s been a distraction, but you say it’s critical. And you talk about words like patriotism and citizenship.

Why is this such an important issue for you?

Trump replied by boasting that it’s “not a distraction at all” because he’s “doing a lot” and with awesome success (in his mind).

Then he started dictating to the NFL. That’s disturbing enough, given that it’s a private business. But underneath that attack was the not-so-subtle suggestion that being willing to attack the (black) players makes Trump braver and more patriotic than the white owners who don’t:

TRUMP: I saw this a year ago with [Colin] Kaepernick. And I said this is a terrible thing. I thought it was terrible. And then it builds up a little bit and a little bit more and you see what’s been happening.And then all of a sudden, you see more and more and more.

And I came out and made a statement in Alabama the other day and I said, I think it’s very disrespectful to our country. And the world’s picked it up.

And guess what?

Most people agree with me. And the NFL is in a box. They have to do something about it. They’re disrespecting—and when I say they, in a way, it is they, because they can stop it.

[…]

I have so many friends that are owners. And they’re in a box. I mean I’ve spoken to a couple of them. They say, we are in a situation where we have to do something.

I think they’re afraid of their players, you want to know the truth. And I think it’s disgraceful. And they’ve got to be tough and they’ve got to be smart, because you look at the ratings. The ratings are going way down. The stadiums are—I’ve seen a couple of stadiums over the last few weeks. They are losing—there are a lot of empty seats. I couldn’t even believe it.

Back in the studio, Huntsman gushed over this message, saying we need to hear more of Trump’s “important conversations” with NFL owners:

HUNTSMAN: I love these interviews with President Trump because he’s off script and he gives us a sense of conversations that he has behind closed doors, where it’s like, “Look, I’ve talked to some of these owners. They tell me that they are in a really tough position.” And he said at one point that they are afraid, he thinks, of the players. That’s a comment that you would not hear from a president ever but he lets us know the real conversations that are had, the important conversations that we probably need to hear about.

Watch this national disgrace below, from the September 28, 2017 Fox & Friends.